Project 52 2012 (14/52): On Saying Goodbye (Even When You're Not Yet Ready To)

.:Project 52 2012 (14/52): On Saying Goodbye (Even When You're Not Yet Ready To):.

Don't you just love it when Cyanide and Happiness, gets it right?

Sometimes, you find yourself in a relationship for so long where everything becomes mundane, even mechanical. At times, you end up pretty much letting the relationship run on auto-pilot, and this is true for a lot of long-term relationships, whether ranging from the romantic or the professional. 

However, after everything has been said and done, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, it's the routine that gives us a kind of reliability, maybe even a kind of stability, that we've come to unknowingly appreciate for its sheer predictability. Not everything needs to be a page-turner in life, and long-term relationships can be some of the most rote things in the world.

That stability, that mundaness, all of it can be good. It can bring about an ordered world and some semblance of sanity in one's hurly-burly life. It gives one a sense of certitude where everything else can seemingly be called to question, and where one's appreciation for the relationship itself allows them to find a deeper kind of understanding in the very banality of it all.

So yeah, just imagine the inevitable mess that comes about with the abrupt end of that kind of relationship.

Imagine your feelings being torn asunder as everything you held to be true suddenly becomes a lie the very next moment, and how it throws all your best-laid plans, the future you're building with that relationship in mind, and the certitude that comes with the relationship, no matter how easy it seems to take such for granted. Imagine the feeling of abandonment that comes when suddenly, the simple things you took for fact no longer exist, and in their place, there is an immeasurable void that you don't quite know how to fill anymore.

Imagine having to say goodbye when you're not yet ready to. The uneasy feeling as everything you held to be true and everything you had faith in becomes little more than a hazy light that burns brightly only in your mind, and nowhere else.

I mean, are we ever really prepared to say goodbye to the things we've held near and dear to our hearts for so long? I honestly don't quite know if we truly get to that point, and perhaps, we never would.  From that point on, we feel a sense of betrayal, regardless if there was anyone to blame for the abrupt farewells, or even if it may have been our fault, for that matter.

It is with these haunting thoughts I begin to ask myself why we, as temporal beings, seem to want to hold on to some things permanently. Perhaps it's simply because we know everything else is fleeting, and the few things we have as constants are so because they are worth keeping so. Perhaps it's naivete on our part, expecting something we should never have in the first place.

Any which way, having to walk away from something without being ready for it stings. And it gives one a moment of pause: what now? How am I supposed to live without you?

A year ago, "Break Even" was one of those songs that spoke to me with the lyrics "what am I supposed to do when the best part of me was always you?" This year, "Somebody That I Used To Know" did more of the same when the song got to "but you didn't have to cut me off, make out like we never happened and we were nothing." It's hauntingly real and close to home to have to feel these lyrics hit you, but sure, that's all about romantic relationships, right?

Sure. But more often than not, walking away from other relationships when you're not quite ready to just yet could have a deeper effect on you than you would expect. And heaven help you if you never find the answer to the most important question that you inevitably encounter at this point: where do we go from here?

Indeed, that's the five-million dollar question. And only you can answer it for yourself. In time.